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Registers of Acceptance: Affecting Equanimity in Buddhist Thailand

Sat, March 18, 3:00 to 5:00pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Mezzanine, Willow Centre

Abstract

“You know," my friend Sen said of my host sister Goy in the northern Thai town of Mae Jaeng, "Goy wears Northern Thai clothes and speaks Northern Thai like me, but she does it to make a point. I just do it because that’s where I am, it’s what I do.” In referring to Goy’s clothes and speech as markers of a particular kind of (Northern Thai) person, while naturalizing his own (apparently identical) behaviors, Sen was presenting his own self-reflective stance of Thai identification. Sen was talking explicitly about clothes and language, but was referring more broadly to the different kinds of stylized registers of affective practice that can be put on in different ways by different people. In this talk I address Sen’s nod to the multiple natures of reflexive practices in relation to the constructions and representations of emotion in an increasingly politicized Thailand. Calmness (Thai: jai yen), acceptance (tham jai), equanimity (chuey) and mindfulness (sati) are all shared ideals in the country, seen to represent an affective mastery of one’s self and environment. At the same time that these feelings are celebrated and cultivated in Buddhist practice they can also be used to represent a certain kind of Thai identity whose significations are often manipulated. In this talk I will examine these concepts in relation to what is seen as a ‘good’ Thai person, and how people in Mae Jaeng think about frictions of affective registers in government speeches, news reports, and everyday Thai social life.

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